


Dissolve

by arthur_pendragon



Series: Brittle [4]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Incest, M/M, Modern Era, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 20:26:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14433423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_pendragon/pseuds/arthur_pendragon
Summary: Arthur disappears when Merlin is twenty-four years old.





	Dissolve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Michaelssw0rd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michaelssw0rd/gifts).



> okay. this is really the end of the series. like. really, really the end.
> 
> for Tee, who channelled Morgana and dreamt I wrote this.
> 
> I apologise in advance. You'll know what for if you get to the end.

Arthur disappears when Merlin is twenty-four years old.

* * *

 

(“Merlin,” said Arthur as Merlin yawned and pulled the covers over them. “Merlin.”

Merlin sleepily peered at him.

Arthur smiled a little, the corner of his gorgeous mouth tilting up, and bestowed a languorous blink in Merlin’s direction. “Nothing.”

Merlin, tired from sex and more sex and even more sex, didn’t push. 

He should have.)

* * *

 

All Merlin really remembers from the last night he spent with Arthur is Arthur’s careful kisses and a whisper of _I will always love you, I’m yours for life_ that Merlin doesn’t think he was supposed to hear, a secret sealed in the space between Merlin’s skin and Arthur’s.

(Merlin woke the next morning to empty space in Arthur’s outline; Arthur had left, taking nothing but the clothes on his back and his wallet. Merlin knew, then. He knew Arthur would never come back, but he hoped anyway.)

Merlin waits for a day, and as night settles outside the apartment but heavier in his heart, he calls Gwen and Lance. 

“He hasn’t phoned us in about a week,” says Lancelot, voice tinny through Merlin’s cheap mobile phone speaker. “I asked him to be my best man the last time I saw him. His answer was… less than enthusiastic, and I didn’t really feel like he wanted to talk for whatever reason.”

When Lancelot passes the phone to Gwen, Merlin can hear Gwen kissing Lance and getting up, padding into another room and shutting the door behind her. 

“Merlin,” she says quietly. “He didn’t remember, did he?” 

“Not a thing,” Merlin answers, honest forever to his Queen.

“I… I’m so sorry. I have to confess.”

Merlin bites his lip as tears of frustration gather in his eyes.

“I told him,” Gwen whispers. “He asked me, and I told him everything. And I think he thought we’re crazy, or he’s crazy, or—”

“Me,” Merlin says, hoarse.

“No, not you, never you. He wanted to believe you. I think that’s why he came to me.”

“What exactly did you tell him?”

“Everything,” Gwen says simply. “His life as Prince and then King back in Camelot. His family. What Lance and the other knights and I were to him. What you did for him, how you were there for him at the end—oh.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Merlin says, and ends the phone call.

* * *

 

Merlin supposes he hasn’t been the most forthcoming of people where Arthur’s concerned. His cryptic answers and inexplicable tears wreaked havoc with Arthur’s heart, because Merlin wanted nothing more than to share his soul with Arthur but couldn’t stand the slightest chance of Arthur tearing himself apart—a foolish self-sacrifice on Merlin’s part that went and destroyed Arthur in a self-fulfilling prophecy that will _not fucking leave them alone_ no matter how many lives Merlin atones in. He can hear Kilgharrah’s sardonic laughter ringing in his ears.

It is this that stops Merlin from running out of the apartment in search of Arthur for a month, the thought that perhaps Arthur doesn’t want to have Merlin anywhere around him anymore. Thirty-one days of agony where he studies for his exams morning, noon, and night, talks to Gwen because she’s persistent in her concern, talks to Freya because he can’t help himself. Angrily rubs the heels of his palms against his eyes that refuse to close, screams at his mind that frets not about the apartment rent, not about his piss-poor marks, not about anything but the thought of Arthur seamlessly melting away into the London masses, just out of reach of Merlin’s fingertips.

(Arthur left his phone behind. Merlin heard the ringtone and dashed to the bathroom, found a razor and the phone by the washbasin tap, no note, no goodbye.)

Arthur can take care of himself. Merlin’s grown up around him, always had stars in his eyes whenever he giggled at Arthur posing like a bikini model for Merlin, and even if Merlin’s soul can’t distinguish between the prince he’ll love through perpetuity and the golden hero who pressed an ice-pack to his baby brother’s swollen knee, his brain can; and his brain knows comfortably that the older brother who shouted down Merlin’s teachers and licked the hurt out of Merlin’s mouth in the sanctity of a dark room will find a way to survive.

Guilt burns like lava in his veins when his mother rings him up, anyway.

“How _dare_ you,” she says into the phone, breath escaping her in anguished stutters. “He’s—run away and you don’t even—we’re your _parents_ , Merlin, even if you don’t see us that way—”

“Mum,” Merlin says desperately and runs out of things to add.

“Merlin, your father and I, we’ve—we’ve done all we could to look the other way, we’ve never said a word, we let you live your life the way you and Arthur wanted even when the rest of our family wouldn't look at us; all we asked for in return was that you spared a little bit of love for your parents. We’re not who you see when you look at us—” and this sends Merlin spiralling to the floor, the memory of Arthur’s lips shaping similar words a brand on his eyelids— “but in this life you’re still ours, you’re still—” a wrench of a gasp and she’s gone, too.

* * *

 

Merlin packs an overnight bag and shuts the door of the apartment and his previous life behind him. Magic is a luxury the universe didn’t think to grant him this time around; Merlin would’ve squandered it had he had it, conjured silly illusions to charm Arthur, to distract him from the pain and shame that Arthur’s noble conscience forced through each of his pores.

_Brother._

“Arthur,” Merlin hisses into the frigid January air, and takes the next bus that comes his way; thirty-one days of exam preparation and the immaterial concerns of academia float away into the past like so much wastepaper whipping into the sky.

Magic must be hanging on Merlin like a cloak anyway, for he somehow finds himself at the beginning of all things, the start of the cycle—Tintagel, where Merlin’s Arthur was born. Of course, it looks different now. Merlin remembers keenly how it used to be, how it was, then how it wasn’t. He finds a place to stay, not a hotel or an inn but a kind stranger’s hearth. Arthur isn’t here. Merlin would know. Merlin’s very spirit calls out to Arthur, a nightingale singing poetry to the moon.

“Merlin,” someone says, as Merlin sits on a rock at Tintagel Haven and glares at the sea.

It’s Morgana. Merlin had hoped never to meet her in this life.

She’s smiling.

“Merlin,” she repeats, and takes a seat beside him, reaching out to hold his hand. She looks happier, far happier than Merlin had ever given her cause to be. “I have something to give you.”

“Why are you here,” Merlin says sullenly, and knows it’s not Morgana but Arthur to blame for the discord in his lungs.

“Destiny catches up to us all,” Morgana says, serene. Merlin wants to take that serenity and crush it because Arthur’s _fucking_ _gone_. “Your brother wanted me to give you this.” She passes him an envelope, the flap sealed shut with Sellotape. Merlin’s heart pounds as he turns it over to see his name written in Arthur’s hand.

* * *

 

Morgana observes the sky as Merlin’s eyes devour the doubtless loving letters of Arthur’s sentences. She doesn’t know what her brother (isn't he her brother, too? Merlin's in this lifetime, but Morgana's forever) has written, only that he had left the envelope by her pillow and asked her to deliver it to Merlin when he came. And as quick as he’d appeared to make things right, he’d faded away.

A choked sob struggles free from Merlin’s throat.

“What?” Morgana asks, cautious.

Merlin thrusts the paper at her. “Fucking drama queen,” he spits, every bit a hypocrite.

_Maybe in our next life I’ll be your Arthur again. Maybe in our next life I’ll remember. My obnoxious brat, you are incomparably cherished; but the oceans were calling and I know you’re right behind me. You’ve chased me for centuries, give chase one more time._

“Arthur,” Morgana sighs, but all her breath catches in her chest the next second as Merlin scrambles from the rock to the white foam kissing the shore. She can’t call him back. Her voice isn’t working. Her hands aren’t moving. She’s frozen still and can only watch as Merlin wades into the water, dives in and swims, away and away,

a glimmer on a lush turquoise bed of stars,

a lover never to be found.

**Author's Note:**

> ahem. well.


End file.
